Today was our last day of mission. We all got up and were enthused to go be with the children one last time in the Children’s Home before our flights left this afternoon (at least for most of the group). We spent a long morning at the Children’s Home and it was quite beautiful because it was our moment to just love the kids until the end.

Many sought out their “favorite” kids to give them a little extra loving before we had to say good-bye. And we stayed a little longer than we normally have this week in order to “say our goodbyes”.

Then we returned to the Guesthouse to finish packing and end with Mass before hopping on “The Frog” (the green truck that transported us nearly everywhere this week) and off to the airport for our flights.

Thank you all for participating with us through your prayers! We look forward to seeing you soon!

With these words we began our sharing this evening and Zack was quick to reply “and my last mission was one day ago!”

We have lived very full and fulfilling days here and as nearly half the group departs tomorrow afternoon, we shared some of our favorite moments from the mission as well as a word that sums up our mission experience (or for the more verbose, a phrase).

I recently had the grace to spend some days of retreat in Cheshire. Ten years ago I walked those halls as a first year novice, and the memories that flooded my thoughts and prayers these days were innumerable, both of joy and pain, but always of gratitude. I penned the following lines one misty afternoon to try to weave together these impressions a little. If they seem to have little reason and less rhyme, this is because they are more an expression of the heart than of the mind. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve had another very full day here in Port-au-Prince. It has been a common reality among us to forget the day of the week and even the fact that we are still in the first week of Lent. It seems like it’s been ages since Ash Wednesday. And today is only the one-week mark.

Today, we could say we have experienced the brokenness of Haiti. After our experiences of the past few days, which, although difficult, did show us a stark beauty in the Haitian people; today was a bit different. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, one of our missionaries mentioned that she felt she could go home since she had experienced so much that day already. If tonight’s moment of sharing was any clue, today topped it.

An opportunity opened up for us this morning because of another Mission Youth group that is also on mission with us here. They invited us to accompany them to St. Louis de Gonzaga School to share an hour with the high school young men there. This school is known as one of the best in Haiti and the “rumor” is that there they are forming Haiti’s next president. This was a side of Haiti that we had not seen yet. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the end of day two and one of our missionaries summed it up well: “we have done so much already that we could almost go home”. Almost being the key word. We definitely have enough stories to tell already, but we are happy to be staying here in order to continue the experience!

The day began with our first visit to the Children’s Home. We weren’t the only group that was volunteering there today—there were two others (that included some 40 high school kids) and it was also the day that the children’s’ parents came to visit. With all of that, somehow we all had children to hold and to love. (Fr. Thomas, who was also here last week with another Canadian group, told us there were many more children that had been admitted this week.) Read the rest of this entry »

While in Haiti I had the grace of visiting a few houses of the Missionaries of Charity and spend time with "Mother Theresa’s nuns". As always, they are women of few words. But those words can be sharp as a knife or rich enough to fill a spiritual book. This time I had a chance to have a chat with Sr. Abba, MC the Superior of the community of Jacmel. She is 78-years-old, and walks with a cane because she suffers from a degenerative knee condition that is already affecting her hip. She has been in Haiti for 38 years and has seen it all: floods, hurricanes, tropical storms and of course the last tragedy the earthquake in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

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The articles on this blog are the personal responsibility of each author and are not meant to be the institutional voice of the congregation of the Legionaries of Christ or the Regnum Christi Movement.